


Unmasked

by virtueofvice



Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, M/M, Multi, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 09:19:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5621842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virtueofvice/pseuds/virtueofvice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rorschach can't get along with the team's newest member. It's difficult to tell if anyone even wants him to. <i>Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Unmasked

She pushed in, somehow, inserting herself into the comfortable partnership he had come to rely on, imposing her femaleness on his world without a thought for him or his distaste for her. Rorshach reacts accordingly, treating her with all the welcoming cameraderie one shows a cockroach infestation.

But then she breaks a thug's bone with savage finality, a blur of poisonous, warning yellow and deep wet black; vicious like the city and he cannot look away. "Take a fucking picture, Rorschach." She snaps, and strides past him out of the alley.

And she is tender - oh, is she _ever_ \- with Dan; gently pulling back his cowl to dab antiseptic on a cut over his eyebrow, her long fingers cool and affectionate, threading through his wavy hair. The kiss on full lips is fleeting, chaste; but still thrumming with adrenaline from the fight, Dan makes a small sound of wanting and Rorshach feels something twist low in his gut, flush making the blots on the mask spread over high cheekbones before melting again into abstract insouicance. Laurie glances at him, almost as if gauging his reaction to a performance meant for him, and he rises to leave as if the room is on fire.

And he whimpers in the dark, in his narrow mean bed; harder than he has ever been and clenching his fists as he grits his teeth and fights off wave after wave of lust and loathing and shame. Dan has already debauched himself, fallen under her spell - Rorschach cannot allow himself to be claimed as well. The thought of the two of them together makes him harder still, and he despairs.

The assault is so predictable he could have planned it - the hissing, disdainful tones of reprimand in his mind accusing him of exactly that. He storms off from the Nest again, having uttered in his rasping monotone an insult so vile it approaches biblical proportions and leaves them both gaping in his wake. The rapid click of heels on the asphalt that follows does not surprise him, but the efficiency of her takedown certainly does. In a sudden burst of near-predatory violence, she cold cocks him, blood springing to his scalp and seeping through the mask under the askew brim of his fedora. He finds himself on his back in the damp alleyway, her boot over his throat. He tells himself he stills because he is winded, but he cannot seem to make his body move.

"Is it me you're jealous of?" She demands scathingly, brown hair like a river of wet silk in the murky streetlights. "Or is it Dan?"

"Neither." Rorschach spits back, with just as much venom. He wants to tell her not to flatter herself, that he now holds them both in equal contempt... But the toe of her boot presses on his windpipe, and he whines - inkblots on the mask roiling like his wide and rolling eyes beneath it. " _Both._ "

And he wants to kick up with both feet and shove her away, or grasp her ankle with the hands she's left free and break it, and escape into the night - but the long, long line of her leg is smooth and white, and the pale cold moon of her face is even more expressionless than his mask, and there is nothing he can do but lie there on the pavement and bleed.


End file.
